While Shepherds Washed Their Socks by Night
by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley celebrate Christmas. Archangel-on-the-lam Gabriel tags along. Because, you know, I had to write Xmas fic. Complete.


**Author: **TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel

**Author notes:**

_So, it started off mildly humorous, but developed a sweeter edge, But hey, it's Xmas fic, right?_

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**WHILE SHEPHERDS WASHED THEIR SOCKS BY NIGHT…**

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"_While shepherds washed their socks by night –"_

"My dear, I am quite certain that you know that those are _not_ the correct words."

Aziraphale shot the demon a look. Crowley grinned unabashedly back.

"Nah, I like his version," said Gabriel.

The archangel had an irreverent sense of humour, to say the least. His festive red-and-green '_God loves stupid people; he made SO many_ ' t-shirt had already earned him a number of glares from the more religious carollers.

But then, this was the same archangel who had left his post and pretended to be a pagan god for the last thousand years, so a sense of propriety wasn't really to be expected.

"Besides, it wasn't like that at all. Little bastards were completely freaked, and it took me about half an hour to get the message through their skulls. Don't know why I bothered."

"Shush," Aziraphale said, still attempting to sing along with the other carollers. Every year he tried to participate in the local Christmas carols, and every year Crowley would decide to come along as well and sabotage them.

When Crowley had turned up this year, with the rogue archangel in tow, Aziraphale had only been able to stare in swiftly-concealed dismay.

"_Thus spake the seraph and forthwith, appeared a shining throng, of angels praising God on high, who thus addressed their song, who thus addressed their song –"_

Crowley sniggered as one of the nearby trees abruptly dumped its accumulated layers of snow onto the people below, the weight suddenly too much for the branches. There were startled cries.

A small child had to be uncovered by his parents, after the snow almost buried him. He blinked around with a bewildered expression, as though wondering what had just happened.

"Crowley!"

"It wasn't me," Crowley snickered.

Aziraphale whipped around in time to see Gabriel stick his hands in his pockets.

"_Gabriel_," Aziraphale rebuked.

"You want something, Zira?" Gabriel's pose and facial expression radiated innocence. It didn't take Aziraphale's years of dealing with Crowley to know that it was manifestly false.

"_Behave, both of you_," Aziraphale hissed.

The two troublemakers assumed cowed expressions, which morphed into grins the moment that Aziraphale turned away.

They muttered to each other all through _Angels We Have Heard On High_, but otherwise refrained from disrupting the proceedings, and so Aziraphale ignored them.

They were behaving, he thought absently, rather like the two five year old boys a few metres away, who kept giggling and shoving each other, and being reproved by their parents...

He was halfway through _Adeste Fideles_ when he heard 'lumine' replaced with 'lupis,' and realised that Crowley and Gabriel were substituting some of the Latin words for others that sounded vaguely similar, but meant very different things.

He turned in exasperation, and met two broadly grinning faces.

"Honestly, I can't take you _anywhere_."

"I'm a demon, and he's a false god of chaos," said Crowley. "What did you expect?"

Gabriel smirked, and pulled out several lollipops.

Aziraphale sighed, as Gabriel offered one to Crowley, who accepted.

"Want one?" he asked Aziraphale.

Aziraphale looked at the lollipops askance.

Well, it didn't seem very likely that he was going to get an opportunity to sing without interruption, the way these two were acting at the moment.

"Oh, very well," he sighed, and took one of the proffered sweets.

Gabriel just grinned, and stuck his own in his mouth.

Aziraphale sucked on his own thoughtfully. It tasted like sweetened tea.

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After the carols were over, all three ethereal beings wandered back to Aziraphale's book shop.

Gabriel eyed the books thoughtfully, a contemplative gleam in his eyes, but Crowley leaned in close to hiss into his ear.

"Don't touch the books, trust me. If there's one thing that sets off the angel, it's that, and deep down he can be a right bastard. Last person to try and damage the books… well, it wasn't pretty. Last I checked, they still thought they were a duck. Fairly happy for a duck, mind, but still a duck."

Gabriel considered this for a moment.

Then he turned his head, slowly, and gave Crowley a long, disbelieving look.

Crowley shrugged.

"Don't blame me if something awful happens to you, that's all."

Gabriel sent another glance around him at the dusty tomes, and decided to postpone any pranks, for the moment.

It was just procrastination, that was all. He was in no way wary about what some little Principality might do to him. Nope. Not at all.

He followed Crowley into the kitchen, where Aziraphale was pouring tea and fussing about the food on the table.

Gabriel grinned. His little brother was such a giant _girl_.

He eyes the spread happily, though. There were scones and cream and jam and sponge cake and tea cake and those cylindrical biscuits full of chocolate and a bowl full of sherbet lemons and a plate of monte carlos, and other things besides…

Okay, Zira was definitely his favourite brother right now.

Gabriel snapped up a jug of hot chocolate and poured himself some, before stirring one of the chocolate-filled biscuits through it.

"Oh, what a marvellous idea," Aziraphale said happily, and did the same. "You know my dear, it's nice to have someone drop by who has an _appreciation_ for these things – I offer any of my other brothers so much as a cup of tea, they either look at me as though I've gone mad, or as though I've just dribbled on my shirt."

Crowley choked on his mouthful of cake.

"They really should open themselves to new experiences, and besides, it's not fair to their poor vessels, starving them like that."

Crowley had managed to clear his airways again, and now leered at Aziraphale.

"New experiences, eh?_ I_ could open you to new experiences," he purred, while Gabriel watched in surprised mirth, and wondered if the demon really meant it the way it _sounded_.

Aziraphale frowned austerely.

"Do stop trying to tempt me, Crowley," he said primly. "I have _no_ intention of discovering precisely what experiences you would regard as _novel_."

Gabriel snorted into his hot chocolate. Okay, maybe it was flirting, or maybe it wasn't. It was still pretty amusing from his perspective.

Crowley simply shrugged.

"It was worth a shot. And for the record, I was thinking Disneyworld, or maybe the Moulin Rouge." He grinned evilly.

Aziraphale simply shot him a patient, slightly pitying look.

"My dear, while I admit that I have never been to Disneyworld, the Moulin Rouge would hardly be new to me."

Crowley gaped at the angel, while Gabriel raised his eyebrows in interest.

"There was a rather nice girl who used to work there, poor dear, and I used to bring her and the others pastries after their last show of the evening," Aziraphale explained, as though none of this should surprise the demon.

Underneath the long-suffering look, there was something bright and laughing, as mischievous as Crowley, but far kinder. It made Gabriel stare.

Crowley shut his mouth and shook his head ruefully, while Aziraphale daintily drank tea.

"Why am I surprised?" he asked.

"I really couldn't say."

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Later, much later in the evening, the three of them sat on the rooftop and listened to the choirs of the Host sing.

It was faint, and barely audible from earth, but Aziraphale almost glowed at the sound, an expression of beatific happiness on his face.

Crowley tipped his head back and closed his eyes. As a demon – as one of the original Fallen – the holy sounds should pain him, but instead, deep down, he simply felt a sensation of dim contentment.

He knew very well why. It wasn't something that he would admit to, but as he opened his eyes again he surreptitiously extended a wing a little to brush up against one of Aziraphale's. The angel glanced sideways a little, and his smile grew brighter.

Yeah. Crowley wasn't as much of a demon as he ought to be. Friendship wasn't one of those things demons were meant to have, really.

On that thought – of demons and angels and proper behaviour – he glanced at Gabriel.

The archangel was sprawled on one elbow, looking upwards, the other hand holding a lollipop near his mouth, although he wasn't actually sucking on it.

He looked… sad.

Crowley wasn't sure exactly what made him do it, except maybe that he'd been hanging around the angel too long, and it was Christmas, after all – but he extended his other wing in Gabriel's direction, and deliberately swiped it along the outer feathers of one of the massive wings extending backwards into dimensions invisible to human sight.

Gabriel jerked with shock, his head whipping around to stare at Crowley.

For a moment the demon felt very nervous, as he and the archangel stared at each other; there was something dark in the other's eyes, and the faintest suggestion of ozone in the air. Then, _very cautiously_, Crowley repeated the action.

Gabriel's expression became impossible to describe.

Crowley didn't realise that Aziraphale had noticed what was going on, until one bright white wing extended itself to gently nestle against the underneath of an enormous tawny-gold one.

And suddenly all the tension drained out of Gabriel, and all six of the gigantic wings shifted, pulling back, before spreading and coming forward to cover the three of them, brushing against the white and the blue-black ones.

Crowley carefully ignored the proud, tender look on Aziraphale's face, and the vulnerable one on Gabriel's.

They continued to listen to the heavenly choirs sing. It was good.

**FIN**


End file.
